


A Festival of Lights

by eldritcher



Series: Chorale [9]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Family, Incest, Love, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:47:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Maglor holds to rite and ritual, to family, to a festival of lights.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo/Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: Chorale [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022304
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Song of Sunset AU





	A Festival of Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Fragments resorted from old drafts into questionable coherence, offered to you as a gift for making it through 2020. Well done :) 
> 
> Very fluffy. First person narration from Maglor.

**A Festival of Lights**

  
I lingered in the forge. 

It had been hastily constructed by our soldiers at my father's behest. He had not had the fine tools and materials he had used in Formenos. Instead, he had made do, with the stone and metal of this harsh land, with tools he had wrought from antlers and wood. 

His smithy was still a dull red, from what he had crafted before. The anvil lay discarded. Amidst the coals there were the debris of his failed attempts. 

I had not been his favorite son. He had not liked it when I entered his forge, saying I brought neither talent nor curiosity for his work. It had been the truth. I had thought poorly of his pursuits. I had thought poorly of him.

I felt the door open and close behind me. I held myself still, taut and strung on an emotion I had not thought myself capable of, for someone I had not known well at all.

My companion remained silent as he joined me. My nostrils flared at the scent of woodsmoke and blood on him. I had tired of the day. I had tired of grief and spite for my father. I had tired of looking to the west for our uncle.I had tired of- 

"What did you hope to find here?" He asked softly. 

I had hoped to find my father, alive, so that I might still loathe him in peace, so that I need not mourn him, so that I need not fear how we would bring the oath to its conclusion, so that I need not look to my right and find my brother's brow heavy with the duty of kingship.

"What did he craft?" I asked, instead of replying to my brother's query. 

"A sword, for Nolofinwë. He left it with me before the battle." 

"He should not have left Nolofinwë stranded on the Ice." 

My brother said nothing to that. 

"He should not have struck you when you tried to stop him," I continued, and hated that my brother did not assent. 

"He should not have made us swear the damned oath!" I yelled, before turning to him, to see the grimness on his face. His eyes were distant as he stared at the abandoned anvil and coals. 

I reached for him desperately, wanting him to stay in the present, wanting him with me. His embrace was strength and surety, and he did not flinch when I clung. His hands came to hold me to him, to caress my hair quietly. When I wept, he did not ask me if I wept for our father's death or for our father's acts. 

"What will we do, Russandol?" I asked, hating how torn my voice was. "The oath! Melkor! The doom of Mandos! Our poor uncle! Our cousins!" 

"I am here," he murmured, wiping away my tears, pressing a chaste kiss to my brow. "I am here, Macalaurë." 

I had been a child and I had fallen from my horse, and he had come rushing to me. _I am here_ , he had said then, and I had ceased crying. _I am here_ , he had said, when I had stood stricken at the bloodshed in Alqualondë. _I am here_ , he had said, when our father had demanded that we sail first leaving our uncles and cousins behind. _I am here_ , he had said, when our father had ordered our men to set fire to the ships. _I am here_ , he had said, when we had faced creatures of flame and shadow. 

Our father had demanded that he stay behind when he had ridden out again, to guard the garrisons. I had sent word back to the camp when I saw our father's flank cut off from the armies by Balrogs and dragons. My brother had come, too late. He had saved me, but he had not arrived in time to save our father. He had managed to lead an attack to distract, to let others make back for camp with our mortally wounded father. 

He had not shed a tear. I wondered if his composure came from resignation, from relief, from exhaustion. _I am here_ , he had said, when our brothers and I had stood in our father's tent, waiting for death. He knelt without a word when our father had found the strength, at the end, to pass over the crown of our grandfather and proclaim him High-King. 

"What will we do?" I asked my brother, once I had finally regained my composure. Against my palm, his heart beat true. Against my ear, the pulse in his throat comforted. When I inhaled deeply, I caught the scent of him underlaying blood and smoke. He bent to press a kiss to my cheek, and gave me a soft smile. 

"Our people need us now," he told me, taking a step away, and I felt the loss of our embrace with potent sorrow. "You are my heir, Prince Macalaurë. Come with me."

He led me out of the forge. We fell into step with each other, as we had in Formenos, in Tirion, in Alqualondë. 

Our people awaited us. 

"Hail the High-King! Hail Nelyafinwë!" The heralds called. 

My brother was not wearing our grandfather's crown. He stepped forward and climbed the raised dais the soldiers had constructed to address the people. My heart clenched at the picture he made, in armor still, his face and clothes spattered by blood and mud. 

"We will mourn more, in the wars to come," he said quietly, with authority that was not born of crown or scepter. "In Valinor, we did not have rites to celebrate life, when life was taken for granted. In this new land, let us learn to celebrate the days we have together, to celebrate the days we had together with those we lost to evil's blade or nature's calamity. These are new ways, but we are a new people, shorn of the Valar's trappings on us."

He nodded to the soldiers. They brought forward what seemed to be sticks of incense and distributed them amongst the weary populace. I received one too, as did my brothers. 

"With me, now," our new King said. He walked to one of the torch-bearers and lit his stick in the flame of the torch. It crackled and blazed to bright light. I smelled woodsmoke and metal. 

He walked to me then. I lit my stick with the flame of his. From one to another, the sticks were lit, from the princes to the soldiers, to the bedraggled and lost people who had followed us east. 

In the darkness, against the lake, we stood in a giant circle of light, remembering the fallen, looking forward to our tomorrow. Children, excited by the firecrackers, were the first to laugh in joy. We had not heard them laugh since that fateful day by the ships. Their happiness was infectious, until there was hope and song, among a festival of lights. 

New rites for a new people. 

Later, as I made to retire to my tent, I saw that my brother receiving an emissary. An emissary? Frowning, I made my way to him. His face was shadowed and pensive. 

"From Thingol's people?" I asked. He shook his head, walking back to his tent. I followed him.

"From Melkor," he replied, once we were in the privacy of his tent. 

"Russandol-"

"We cannot win with the armies we have," he said plainly. "We must hold him off until our uncle arrives."

He held that our uncle would arrive. Even when he had watched our father burn the ships, he had said flatly that our uncle would arrive.

"You cannot mean to seek a truce!" I exclaimed, horrified, thinking of those monsters that Melkor had sent to battle us. How could we broker a truce with beasts? 

"Only a discussion," he said evenly. "On neutral territory." 

Outside the tent, there were sounds of warriors and children laughing. Through the drape of fabric, we could see the firecrackers light up the night skies. When our father had ruled, there had been only quietness and grim purpose in our people. The children had been stoic, as they had been taught to wield sword or craft weaponry. 

I heard women singing outside, and the songs were not elegies or anthems. These were songs of tomorrows, of flowers, and of frivolity. I could not help a smile and turned to my brother, only to see the tenderness on his face as he watched me. 

"I have not seen you smile in a very long time," he said. 

"You make a good King," I told him truthfully. 

* * *

**Children of Cain**

  
"It was my fault. I should have prepared for the winters," I told my uncle, as we stood by the lake in silent watch. 

His hair was turning white from despair and grief. He had followed us east, across the Ice. Many had died. Many died after they reached the safety of these shores. They had reached us starving and sick, for the cold had set into their bones. 

My brother had put into place a robust system of administration before he had left. He had raised a skeleton of an economy quickly while our father had been busy plotting war. He had planned for our uncle's people. He had put into motion the construction of granaries and tanneries and healing halls and sleeping halls, siphoning away resources from our father's instructions to raise smithies and stables. His forethought bought us a semblance of peace. Even if there was scorn for our actions, the survivors were content to blame Fëanáro and to forgive his sons and warriors.

Findekáno had stepped forward to raise our defenses, to train our soldiers for the wars ahead. Artanis had taken charge of the healing tents. Turkáno and Findaráto had hastily assembled scouting groups to seek news of Morgoth's prisoner. Angaráto and my brothers began to build systematic hunting plans to tide us over the winter months. 

That first winter together, I asked our warriors to cull our herds of horses, to gather fat and meat to feed the sick, to gather pelts to clothe the cold. If my brother had been there, he would have found another way. 

"You could not have known the magnitude of these winters," my uncle said kindly. Many refused to eat horse. My uncle and I feared where starvation and hunger would lead our desperate people to. "You did your best, Macalaurë." 

"Russandol suspected it." 

My brother had amassed dried fruits and fish in the granaries. It had not been enough. If he were here-

 _You are my heir_ , he had said, and left me to weather the winters alone. Our children had not laughed since tidings of his capture had reached us. Our people had fallen into stoic resolve. I was as my father, more than I had suspected. I could neither inspire nor comfort. 

It ought to have been a relief when Nolofinwë had finally arrived. That should have brought hope to us, but they came to us cold and starving, and we met them kingless and bereaved. There had been little joy since. 

I swallowed and tried to think of what needed to be done. I thought of my brother standing before us, holding a stick of light, and children laughing as they circled their firecrackers into strange and wonderful shapes against the dark light. 

"The warriors need closure," I said hoarsely. "They need-" I bit off my words, wishing I had half of my brother's courage to do what needed to be done. 

"We will not mark his passing before he has died," Nolofinwë replied. His voice wavered as he continued, "The enemy would not have hesitated to send us tidings if they had killed him, to break our spirit further. He is alive." 

He was alive. I knew that. Turkáno's spies brought us tidings from the thralls that had escaped, from loose-lipped goblins, from the evil men of the eastern plains. Each time, when they brought news to our audience chamber, I sat as a statue and forced myself to listen, strong before my family, before our soldiers, before our people. Afterwards, I would find solitude and weep.

"Nolofinwë! Macalaure!"

It was Artanis, disheveled and horrified. 

"It is Findekáno! He left a letter. He has gone to Angband." 

That ended my strength. My uncle took the reins of our administration then. He settled into the role easier than I had. He had ruled with my brother in Tirion, when Grandfather had retreated to Formenos and Arafinwë had retreated to Alqualondë. 

\------------------

"Summon our family," my brother asked. 

"You are in no state for visitors," I said softly, hesitating to kiss even his brow lest the gesture worsened his pain. 

"I am here," he whispered, dredging up a smile for me, eyes lustrous and soft. 

He struggled to drag his hand up from where it lay by his side underneath the thick blankets I had draped to keep him warm. Every inch of him from neck to toe was wrapped carefully in bandages doused in powerful healing ointments Artanis had ridden far and wide to procure. I gently placed my fingers over his covered palm. 

"That will not do," he noted. "May I feel your touch on my face, brother?" 

He had never been the most tactile one. My heart was seized with grief, but I met his smile with one of my own, and bent to press a kiss to his cheek. 

"Thank you," he said, and the naked sincerity of his gratitude undid me. In another place, in another time, he might have held me to him as I wept. Then, in that room of healing, unable to lift even a finger, he could only watch me, disconsolate and full of remorse. 

"I am here," he said finally. 

He was. They said he was insane. They said that he was half of what he had been. They said that the enemy had poisoned his mind and turned him traitor. We lapsed into silence until he fell asleep, dosed on medicines and alleviators for pain that Artanis plied him with. I kept watch.

In the morning, when he stirred, he said quietly, "Summon our family."

When we were assembled in the room, my brother waved away my offer to speak for him.

"We must cease moping," he said, pragmatic even if he was bedridden and his voice was a weak wisp. "This is no time for sorrow's inaction."

"Findekáno brought you back to us a puddle of nerve and raw flesh, and you have the gall to ask us to stop grieving!" Tyelko had never minced words. I flinched at the hard tone he spoke in, at the truth of it. 

"Our people need us," Russandol continued, implacable. A coughing fit caught him. 

I sighed and sat beside him, dousing a wet rag in a bowl of water as Artanis had shown me, and gently pressing the rag to his lips so that he could suckle, and massaging his throat until he could swallow, dabbing away the excess. I was embarrassed on his behalf, but he had never been to shy away from his duty even if he intensely disliked being seen by others in this manner. 

"Summon our people. We should celebrate life," he asked. 

"They have been dying in dozens over the winters, Maitimo," Turkáno informed him. "They have seen everything from kinslaying to cannibalism, turned from themselves by fear and starvation. There is little cause to celebrate now. At least, let us wait for the season to turn." 

"They are a desperate people. This is no hallowed land. We must learn to celebrate what remains, or we shall have lost before we begin." 

Russandol spoke with conviction. The fire in his eyes was alien and blazing, and I tried to see past it to the brother I had followed all my life. He had always been charismatic, a master of words, but since his return there was an intensity in him that I had not seen before. 

"You _are_ King," Findaráto allowed. I could see how our family began to cede, to thaw and come around to his proposal. 

"We shall discuss the Kingship once I can walk," Russandol replied, with a thoughtful glance at our uncle. "We shall discuss amends."

"There are no amends that need be made," Nolofinwë said firmly. "We are family."

"That is why I must make amends, uncle." 

"You are not to blame for Fëanáro's acts, my poor child." Nolofinwë sighed and came to run a quick and gentle hand over my brother's shorn head. "You are alive. You are here. That is ample cause for celebration." Our uncle turned to me. "Send word to the barracks and to the kitchens, Macalaurë. Let us celebrate."

"A festival of lights," my brother requested. 

So be it. 

\-------------- 

Artanis had to drug him to the gills to lend him a temporary strength to walk under his own power. I stayed beside him, to his right, watchful, discreetly supporting him whenever he lost his footing. 

"It could be worse," he said.

"How could it be worse?" Artanis demanded, walking to his left, eagle-eyed as she monitored his well-being. 

"You could have decided to learn painting instead of healing," he explained. 

A spark of amusement flickered in her eyes, despite herself. I had not seen her truly happy since the oath. Her mother had washed her hands off our family. Her father had returned to Tirion. Guilt burned me alive whenever I looked at her. She had followed us, but I knew she had followed me. We had been lovers once. 

"You merely like that I keep you in excellent opiates," she muttered. 

"Can you blame me? They are wondrous." He fumbled for her hand and squeezed it. "Your gown suits you."

"You had it made," she pointed out, fiddling with her sleeves of lace. "Irissë ratted you out, cousin." 

He had remembered what I had not, what the rest of us had not. Her father had always procured her gowns whenever there had been ceremonies or matters of state. 

"You refuse to let me wear finery. I might as well as live vicariously."

"When your skin grows back, you may wear finery again." She laughed, and said wryly, "Stop trying to cheer me up."

"Look cheerful then," he remonstrated. 

He could hardly stand by the time we came to the platform where our uncle waited. Findekáno came forward to assist him, but Russandol shook his head. There was a strange dynamic between them after their return together on eagle-back. I had wanted to ask my brother of it, but could not bring myself to. He had never taken well to questions about himself, and I could tell that he was circumspect about this matter. Findekáno was not one for subtlety and secrets, but he had been unusually withdrawn. 

Russandol stepped forward into the pool of torchlight and the audience quieted swiftly, looking to him with both curiosity and relief. 

"I acknowledge the suffering of our people, the deprivations and the losses of those who crossed the Ice. I acknowledge our starvation and sickness over the long winters. You have been a brave people. When I behold you, I see strength and faith. In my trials and tribulations in captivity, knowing of your courage was my courage."

"I heard the clarions of our people from behind the gates of Angband. I saw our Enemy restless and fretful as he heard of the unification of the Noldor. He fears us, now that we are one again. He is right to fear our unity." 

"We will have time for strategy and war, in the days to come. We will have time for making amends among our people." 

"This, now, is a time to celebrate life. After our first war, after my father's fall, I spoke to you of how we are a new people, in a new land, of how we must set for ourselves new rites and rituals to mark our identity. Let this rite be one of ours, in the years to come."

"In times of hunger, in times of despair, in times of loss, in times of grief, in times of war, remember that today we celebrated life with our festival of lights." 

Nolofinwë held his shaking hand as he raised his stick to the torch. Then, our uncle lit his stick from my brother's. The firecrackers shone as stars in the night's dark, true and fierce. I sensed our people's relief and hope. There was no rift between my brother and my uncle, regardless of what my father had done. 

"No matter the place, no matter the company, no matter if we have cause to laugh or grieve, let us vow to celebrate life every year with our festival of lights." 

Our uncle beckoned to the soldiers and they began distributing the sticks of firecrackers. The children were the first to turn to each other in excitement. Their gaunt faces, stripped to the bone by the deprivations of winters many, were lit up in the torchlight by exclamations of joy. 

I cursed when I saw Russandol faltering, but Nolofinwë steadied him and carefully handed the firecrackers away to an attendant. My brother embraced our uncle, impulsively, despite the pain it must have caused him, and I knew immediately it was not a gesture to placate our people. There was only relief on my brother's face as he let Nolofinwë hold him. It was then that I knew that he would abdicate. 

"I must discuss a matter of import with you," Russandol told me that night, as I prepared to settle in my usual chair to keep watch over him. 

"Abdicate," I told him plainly. "You will be his heir." 

"I-" he swallowed. 

I sensed something darker than what I had initially suspected. Alarmed, I rose to my feet to fetch him water. 

"I am well," he said. "I merely need to find the right words."

"There is nothing you could say that can turn me to anger. You are alive," I said honestly. 

"The oath, Macalaurë. We are bound by it. Nolofinwë is not. Our cousins are not. We may either serve our people or keep our oath."

"You cannot mean to-" I broke off, unwilling to speak impulsively, seeing the grief carven on his face. I cursed our father once more with all my heart. Then, because my brother was alive, because I could ask for nothing more, I said staunchly, "It is for the best, then. Findekáno will make a terrible ruler, if it ever comes to that, but I suppose we shall muddle through."

Russandol shook his head, tears in his eyes. He had wanted to rule. He was an excellent ruler. He had the love of our people.

It would not last, when he was riven by choosing pursuit of the oath over the welfare of our realm. They would spurn him eventually for the choices he would be forced to make to keep the oath. My father had put the oath above our people. It had splintered our family and brought only grief to our people. 

"Russandol-"

"You know why it cannot be," he said shakily, bowing his head, refusing to meet my gaze. 

I was glad for him that it was our uncle he would abdicate to. It would have broken his heart to see the rule passed to someone less worthy. 

I caught his hand in mine and promised, "I am here."

* * *

**Apple of Sodom**

  
We had been estranged for decades. I hesitated at the doors to his chambers. The guards posted at the entrance had carefully averted their eyes as I paced restless. I hoped they were not as lax for every visitor that approached his doors. I wondered if they had orders to let me through. 

I had not visited him even once.

I paced again, and paused by the windows. There were black flags of mourning everywhere, in the barracks, in the courtyards, above the ramparts. 

A king had died. 

Our uncle had died, in single combat against Morgoth. He had wounded Morgoth. 

It had been weeks of rout. Our youngest brothers were dead. Findaráto's brothers were dead. Findekáno had managed to hold Hithlum. Carnistro, Tyelko and Atarinkë had escaped death to retreat to Findaráto's stronghold. 

Russandol had held off a dragon to buy me time to retreat to Himring. 

Did he regret coming to my aid? If he had not led out his armies to succor me, he could have ridden to our uncle's side. I swallowed. If I grieved Nolofinwë, I could scarce fathom Russandol's mourning. They had been close, as father and son. 

Findekáno had been crowned. I knew Russandol had his misgivings. 

After they had returned from Angband, their camaraderie of old had been a stilted thing. They had drunk of a chalice of cruelty and addiction, though bards sang of an undying love. I gnashed my teeth whenever I heard of minstrels waxing eloquent about the greatest tale of romance in Arda. 

From what I had seen, it had brought neither of them any consolation. I loathed Findekáno for how their entanglement had worsened my brother's health and set back his recovery. After Angband, Findekáno had fallen to the vice of alcohol swiftly. There were prostitutes in his bed more often than not. My brother had sought him despite all that. It had been one of the primary reasons of our estrangement. I could not bear to see him destroying himself so. Had he no thought as to how I might bear the knowledge of his self-loathing that he sought to punish himself by seeking our alcohol-addled cousin's cruelty? 

What sort of King would Findekáno make?

Nolofinwë had held our family together until his death. I doubted that Findekáno would manage the same feat. 

If I ruminated so, how troubled must my brother be? 

I summoned my strength, chided myself for my hesitance, and made my way back to the doors to rap sharply. I heard the deadbolts shifting. I was glad that I had come. He had locked himself in. He was never one to, unless he was seeking the oblivion of opiates or ailing or injured. 

When he opened the doors and saw me, he stood startled. He had expected a summons to the healing halls or to the barracks, perhaps. He had expected messengers or emissaries, perhaps. The war still raged in parts, even if we had lost a King and crowned another. 

"What is amiss?" He asked cautiously. 

I loathed his caution. What had I ever done to him to merit it? I loved him, as a brother may not, and he had learned of it and reacted poorly. I hesitated again. I had only come to offer him solace, since I did not wish to see him suffer in mourning alone. Who else did he have right then? 

I had sinned, but mine was a harmless sin. I had not once acted on any of it. Left to me, he would have never learned of the darkness in my heart. If he could seek solace in the arms of our alcoholic cousin and come back bearing the marks of whip and knife, what had he to fear from me? I had married to take myself away from him, to put him at ease, even if it had broken me to be apart. I had heard of his increasing recklessness in battle, and yet I had stayed away, spurned and afraid to behold once more his flinching away from me. 

"Macalaurë-"

"Let me in," I said quietly. 

He looked to the guards. They hastily averted their curious eyes. Sighing, he stepped aside to let me in. 

His chambers were in disarray. I swallowed when I saw the books lying askew and the glasses shattered in the fireplace. It was unlike him to give into violent impulse. The state of his chambers reflected the state he refused to let himself be found in. With interruptions that may arrive at any time as the war petered out, he had to be ready to be summoned to his court and he could scarce afford to grieve. I reached for his elbow instinctively, but aborted the motion seeing his wariness. 

"Let me see to the administration and the barracks," I offered. "Sleep."

He did not reply. 

"When did you sleep?" I asked. "When did you eat?" 

"Before I rode to cover your retreat," he replied softly. 

Four days. At least, he had washed off the battles and changed his clothes. 

This time, when I reached for his elbow, he managed not to flinch. I led him to his bedchamber and waited until he began readying to sleep. I stepped out to send for broth and bread. 

His hand trembled when I handed the platter to him. I hesitated. I would have gladly fed him, but I had little desire to cause another rift between us. 

I left him to his food and rest, and closed the doors behind me.

I walked to the courtyard, and saw the desolation on the faces of our people. Across the plains, I could see the Enemy's armies merrymaking. I strengthened my resolve and returned to my brother's court to prepare for the days ahead of us. 

When he woke many hours later and made his way to the courtyard, he exclaimed in surprise at the sight that greeted him. Then, composing himself, as I knew he would, he came to me. He accepted the stick I gave him and lit it using mine.

As we watched the people celebrate, as we watched the night illumined by our firecrackers, he said quietly, "I am glad that you are here."

I had marked the festival of lights in my keep every year. It was a holiday for the people and one they eagerly looked forward to, after winter's long pall. 

The festival of lights was to celebrate life. 

I had not been truly alive for years, estranged from my brother. Nolofinwë was dead. So many had died in dragon fire as I led my people to the safety of Himring. Life in Arda was a short and bitter thing. 

What did it matter that my brother feared me for something I had never meant to act upon? He lived and I needed no other reason to celebrate. 

The people were waiting for him to speak. If he had not stepped forward to speak yet, grief had drained his strength. I remembered him speaking to our people after our grandfather's death, after the kinslaying, after our father's death, after Findekáno had brought him back. 

I stepped forward. 

"I did not think I would be able to bring you to safety, caught between the armies of goblins as we were, pursued as we were by the dragons. I had chosen to stay, to defend what I could, to die with you, instead of having us splintered and routed." 

Glaurung had been sorcery and strength. Those who had looked into the beast's eyes had found their secrets stripped away. I had been fortunate to have escaped that; my secret was a potent one I had little wish for the Enemy to uncover. 

"We are here because my brother rode for us, to defend the Pass so that we may retreat to safety. His stand broke the dragons' surge."

His decision had saved me. His decision had condemned our uncle. Nolofinwë would not have acted rashly if he had my brother beside him. Nolofinwë had turned increasingly reckless, seeking death, since Irissë had been lost, since my brother had retreated to Himring to distance himself from Findekáno. 

"In times of war, let us remember the family we have lost, and let us remember that there are victories too, and families reunited." 

I turned to face my brother. I could not fathom the expression he wore then. If we had not been estranged over my secret, I would have dared to embrace him. 

"I am glad to have returned to you, brother. I celebrate it today, even amidst all our losses." 

It was hardly a speech for the annals of lore. Speaking to the masses was not my strength. Yet they sensed my earnestness and cheered. 

I returned to my brother's side and we stood in silence, watching the celebrations. 

"Thank you," my brother said finally. 

I did not reply. 

* * *

**Four Rusted Horses**

  
"What is done is done," Artanis murmured. 

We were in her bed, holding each other, weary, heavy of heart and tired of soul. I looked about listlessly, to see the tokens of her life in Doriath, to see her books and her child's baubles. There was a mirror that shifted in color and texture. Perhaps a keepsake from Melyanna. 

What covered her walls were not tapestries of the life she had chosen. No, her walls were covered in tapestries old and fraying, that she had brought across the Ice, of life of a different time, of our family. My throat clenched in grief for her. 

"I had best go see to him," she said, exhausted. 

She had spent the night trying to heal as many as she could, of the survivors, whether they be of her husband's people or our own. There had been nothing she could do for my younger brothers. We had worked together to clean their bodies and to prepare them for cremation. 

Russandol had fainted after leading a long and futile search for the children of the King Dior, and I suspected it was his heart as much as it had been his failing strength. Artanis and I had been left to see to the ugly aftermath. 

Artanis had stayed behind with Oropher of Doriath who had led the defense of the caves. She served as the emissary between Oropher and I, and brokered a truce. We needed to wait the winter out in the caves. We needed to live among the people whose homes we had invaded and whose family we had slain. I could scarce feel remorse, broken by mourning for my brothers as I was. 

At dawn's break, Oropher had said we had done as much as we could, and had asked Artanis to see me to the guest rooms. I admired his pragmatism and mien of diplomacy, even after all that we had committed. Artanis had dragged me to her rooms. We had been lovers once, but we had been the closest of friends before and during and after. We wept together and mourned together, and fell asleep in exhaustion. 

"He shan't be awake," I told her. "You drugged him to the gills."

"He has a high tolerance," she muttered, getting up and seeing to her day's attire. 

I sighed and walked to help her with her stays and laces. There was little sign of a man's presence in these rooms. I wondered if they were used to keeping separate quarters. It seemed a strange marriage. 

"He has been busy with infidelity recently," she said, answering my silence, knowing me well enough to know where my thoughts had wandered. "I should be used to it by now."

Celeborn ran hot and cold. He loved her, and would woo her for months, and then something or the other would lead to an argument and he would seek other beds for a period until he returned to her. I bit my lips, refraining from saying anything cruel. I would not have stayed my vitriol had it been anyone else, but her I loved and I had little desire to harm her more. 

"Oropher seems a steadier hand," I said cautiously. 

"Findaráto told me much the same. Said that if I were set upon a woodland husband, I might at least choose one that knew the meaning of monogamy." 

She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder. I held her quietly, letting her be. 

"I love my husband," she said finally. 

I hoped that sufficed. I loved my brother, but I could not forgive him for the deaths of Atarinkë, Tyelko, and Carnistro.

There was a soft knock on the door. 

"I come, Oropher!" Artanis called out. 

If Oropher seemed shocked and scandalized by my presence in her rooms, he did not exhibit it. I pressed a kiss to her forehead and went to see to our people.

My brother woke in the afternoon, as I had expected. He asked me to send for Oropher. 

"I doubt there is any diplomacy that can avail us there, brother," I told him frankly. 

I had little desire to speak to him of what had happened, of how I had prepared our siblings' bodies for cremation. He must have sensed it too, because he had carefully spoken only of the practicalities of our situation.

We did not need Oropher's cooperation to stay out the winter in the caves. We outnumbered his people. I had no wish, nevertheless, to turn his people out, or worse, to starve them of rations.

"I can reason with Oropher," my brother said confidently. 

I suppressed my urge to strike him for his self-assurance, when our siblings lay in state. They were dead because _he_ had sent a warning ahead to Artanis, to have the caves evacuated before we had arrived. We had not slain children, because of that. And we had also not gained the Silmaril. Had he hoped that Thingol's people, obsessed with the Silmaril as they were, would quietly give it up to avoid bloodshed? I took my leave of him before I said anything cruel. His health was a foregone conclusion at this point, and he was my reason to live, despite everything he had done. I had little reason to see his convalescence slowed, despite my grief and rage. It had never done his health any good when we were on poor terms. 

"He managed to charm Oropher," Artanis told me a few days later. "Oropher asked me to host a dinner."

The funerals and the division of rations and of living quarters had proceeded peaceably. My brother had mostly left it to Oropher, Artanis and I to orchestrate the work. He had focused on his recovery, to regain strength for the journey that awaited us after the winter. I had heard that he had taken to inviting Oropher to his quarters on occasion. I had not given it thought, expecting it to be merely his way of ascertaining the risk of a betrayal while we lived under the same roof. 

A dinner invitation? I frowned. Whatever had he done? 

"Come now," Artanis said, laughing at my suspicions. "He is a charmer, when he wishes. You know that. There is a reason why they call him the best diplomat on either side of the sea."

Ereinion agreed with none of that. At the moment, neither did I. 

"You ought to be kinder to him." Artanis embraced me and met my gaze with quiet sincerity. "He does not have many years left."

She had been the kindest to him that I had ever seen her be. She had not forgiven him, but she had managed to draw a veil over her truths as she attended to him and let him drag her into banter and laughter. She did not expect to see him again, I realized. 

I took her advice to heart. I dressed in a tunic that he had procured for me from the artisans of Nargothrond once. I tied my hair with a brooch he had given me in Tirion when I had first mastered a song on the lute. I set aside my fury and resentment, and went to his door to fetch him for dinner. 

"You are-" he cleared his throat, watching me as if he could not bear to look away. "You look well, brother."

"I cannot say the same about you," I said wryly. 

His robes were of plain grey and the pallor of illness he wore did little to mark him lovely. If he meant to charm Oropher, he was poorly prepared for it. And yet, when I took him by the arm, a sense of home swallowed me, in the scent of him, in the warmth of his flesh against my side. 

"My dearest Macalaurë," he murmured, pressing a kiss to my hair. 

The catch in his voice when he spoke my name shattered something deep in me. I blinked away the emotion that surged. His was the voice that had taught me of music and poetry. He was neither a poet nor a musician, but the shift and stretch of how he spoke vowels and consonants had tuned my ear first. There was no chord in music and no string in instruments that could capture how he had spoken my name. 

"However shall I hold my own when you are a splendid sight as this?" He teased, knowing my discomposure well, wishing to ease me away from it. 

I scowled at his perception, just as I was sure he had intended. 

Artanis waited with Oropher at the dinner table. She raised an eyebrow at my attire. 

"You look as lovely as ever, Artanis," my brother greeted her, bending to press a kiss to her scowling cheek. She flicked him away, and amusement crept in me at the little rigmarole of theirs. 

Oropher was watching us silently, with more curiosity than wariness. Whatever had my brother done to him? 

"Lord Oropher," I greeted him. "Thank you for inviting us to your table." 

He seemed uncertain then. There was little protocol for this, after all. 

"So you say!" Artanis muttered. "You shall take back the greeting once you see the fare, cousin."

"We consume little meat," Oropher said apologetically. 

I looked askance at Artanis. She had never eaten a plant or its fruit without dire threats.

"I do love my husband," she explained, shrugging philosophically. 

"You must," I allowed, laughing at her plight. 

She turned to make eyes at my brother. 

"I shall send out a hunt," Russandol promised. 

"Venison!" She demanded. 

"It is winter, Artanis," my brother protested. "Settle for a hedgehog."

Oropher was torn between hilarity and outrage. 

"Had you been tolerating our table in sorrow all these years?" He asked Artanis. 

The fare was a medley of the rations we had brought on our expedition and the rations stored in the granaries of Doriath. Artanis stuck to the dried meats and cheeses from the Noldor stores. Poor thing. If my brother had not offered to send out a hunt for her, I would have. 

I kept a wary eye on my brother's consumption. He made a valiant effort to partake quarter of a boiled potato before retreating to the wine. He had eaten more than I had expected, so I said nothing. 

"Is our fare not to your taste?" Oropher asked considerately. At least, he did not exhibit offence, as Ereinion did whenever he supped with us at Círdan's table and saw my brother eating nothing. 

"He eats as a sparrow," Artanis said, waving it off, stealing a wedge of cheese from my plate as if we were still in Tirion. "He has never had much of an appetite. He lost taste for our fare after all the fine goblin cuisine they fed him in Angband."

Oropher looked horrified, unused to her brand of dark humor. Had she held herself under a tight rein, unbecoming the woman she was, to keep her husband's love and live among his people? 

"Yes, I developed a taste for mice and grub," my brother allowed. "Alive and raw, of course." 

"Prince Maedhros!" Oropher exclaimed, choking on his wine. Artanis rapped his back helpfully.

"I shall never invite you to dinner again!" Oropher threatened the three of us. 

"It matters not. I am eating venison for the rest of the winter," Artanis said with utter nonchalance. 

"Shall you not invite me to partake of your hunting spoils?" Oropher demanded. He would have made a better husband to her than the one she had chosen. There was no accounting for taste. 

"Have you had game before?" I asked him curiously. "It is an acquired taste." 

We had been on hunts for months with our brothers and cousins. I imagined our grandfather and parents wanted us gone from the house to give them a measure of peace. We hunted all manners of birds and beasts to keep ourselves fed. Even Turkáno, who looked down on game, had been an adept hunter. 

Oropher shook his head. 

"Venison is certainly a milder introduction than mice and grubs," I allowed. 

My brother rolled his eyes at me, but settled in to watch us banter and jest. His eyes lingered on Oropher thoughtfully. It was unlike him to take an interest beyond the practical in someone new, particularly when he stood nothing to gain. He had been _kind_ to Oropher. While he was a compassionate soul by nature, over the years he had withdrawn and had not extended himself to care deeply for others outside our family. 

"My mother, Earwen, did not think much of my tastes in food," Artanis was saying. "She thought little of my choice of cake for breakfast and oysters for tea."

"You were a menace," I told the dear thing. "You sent me at the crack of dawn to the fishermen to fetch you lobsters and crabs and oysters, fresh from the first catch. You would rouse the kitchens as soon as I returned, and order them about to prepare the dishes you loved. The bakers and fishermen of our city must have lost at least a third of their commerce after we left."

"My mother would shout so whenever she caught me eating oysters in bed," Artanis confided. "Lady Nerdanel suited me better. She never called me spoiled rotten if she caught me eating cake for breakfast."

"She did not notice," I explained. "My mother was preoccupied with her craft. Most of us learned to forage and hunt because neither my father nor my mother remembered to emerge from their pursuits to care for us." 

Oropher looked horrified.

"It was pleasant," I hastened to add. "We grew wild as we pleased. Lady Earwen was the only one in the household who had aspirations towards parenting children. Unfortunately, Artanis was a heathen wildchild with little inclinations towards being parented."

"My father was a theatre connoisseur. Our uncle, Nolofinwë, was an inveterate lover of soldiers. His wife had abandoned him for better lovers early in their marriage. Fëanáro and Nerdanel were single-minded about their craft." Artanis shrugged. "Nolofinwë did raise Maitimo, though. He grew up proper, with unimpeachable manners."  
  
Oropher, I could tell, was fascinated despite himself at the tales we told. I suppressed a smile seeing my brother's absorption in our banter. He was not one for nostalgia, but he seemed to have found a measure of peace as he watched Artanis and I speak without recriminations. 

"My mother was a kind woman," Oropher offered. "She was Thingol's sister. Elerrína was her name." 

Artanis set down her glass of wine abruptly. 

I looked at my brother, who betrayed no surprise. He had known. He had known all along. I thanked Eru for it. He had screamed her name in nightmares for months and years, calling to her again and again in unlovely Sindarin, begging for mercy and for forgiveness. When he woke and saw me beside him, he would clutch my hand in desperation, seeking reassurance. After the last war in Beleriand, his nightmares of her had returned again, but they had turned to grief, and when he woke to see me beside him, he would only shake his head and take himself away to be alone. She had died, I knew instinctively, and I shuddered to speculate on the manner of her passing. 

I had never dared ask what she had been to him.

"My mother would make this broth of chestnuts in the winters," Oropher continued, unwitting of the darker secret we carried. "She would sing when she cooked." He shook his head. "The laws of our people were not kind to women. Melian changed many of the laws, later. My mother-" he cleared his throat in discomfort. 

"The laws of Orome," Artanis breathed. "Of conquest and possession." 

"Yes." Oropher sighed. "Elu could do nothing to protect her because of that law. She was another's, because another had taken her and that brought forth a claim. I was this man's, but she raised me without a word of recrimination."

"Our cousin, Irissë, raised the fruit of Eol's cruelty as her own," I said gently. "A child bears no stain, Lord Oropher, regardless of the manner of conception."

Artanis looked miserable, and scowled half-heartedly at Russandol's hand on her shoulder, before turning to rest her head against him. She had told me of what Findekáno had done in his insobriety, of what Russandol had done for her afterwards. I had wept for her, for how she could not bring herself even to grieve. 

"My brother speaks the truth," Russandol concurred. "A woman's choice about the child, to birth it or to be rid of it, also bears no stain." 

"I wonder why-" Oropher cleared his throat, dragging a hand restless across his face to hide his discomposure.

"Love," my brother said firmly. "Love it was that must have dictated her every choice."

"Your words comfort me," Oropher said, laughing wildly. "Elu sent her west, long ago, before any of the Noldor had come to Arda. Her convoy was lost on its way to the sea. Elu and Mablung looked for her for the rest of their lives in vain."

Artanis's hands had come to entwine themselves with my brother's, seeking comfort, offering reassurance that she would not speak a word if he chose not to. Would it be a kindness or a cruelty? I could see the conflict in my brother's gaze as he beheld Oropher. I knew too, as Artanis did, that he would choose to speak vaguely, if comfortingly. 

"We were confident that the Enemy had not found her," Oropher said in a hushed voice. "The Enemy would have made a display of her fate, for she was Elu's sister." 

The Enemy had held her in secrecy, until my brother had gone to parley. He had never spoken of any of it afterwards. I wondered, again, what she had been to him. I wondered darkly why they had used her to torment my brother instead of utilizing her to bring Thingol and Melian to heel. 

"We have a tradition," I began, knowing that my brother needed a reprieve. "We celebrate life with a festival of lights. Winter lies ahead of us, confining us to the caves. There is no goodwill between our people. Perhaps the rite and ritual of our celebration may stay tensions."

Our brothers were dead. We had lost our chance to claim the Silmaril. Oropher spoke of his mother while Artanis and I stayed silent on what we knew, while my brother mourned her. 

"Artanis did not bring your traditions with her," Oropher remarked. 

"Celeborn would never let me hear the end of it," she retorted. "If it were feasible, he would filter out every droplet of Noldor blood in our daughter's veins." 

"An ideal husband," I could not help commenting, dismayed at what this marriage had taken from her. 

"It could be worse," Artanis muttered. "It could always be worse."

"He does love you deeply," Oropher defended his kinsman. "He is merely worried about-" he cut away, politeness holding his tongue. 

"About my kinslaying family and the various oaths and dooms they carry," Artanis said darkly. "In his place, I would be worried too. I cannot blame him for his fears." 

"Our tradition," I interrupted. "It has nothing to do with the peculiarities of our family's pursuits, I assure you, Lord Oropher. It is merely a celebration of life."

"What shall we tell the people?" Oropher fretted. 

"Oh, Russandol can address them," Artanis said dismissively. "He can sweet-talk orcs into laying down their weapons and choosing a life of piety."

"Careful, cousin. We should not speak of the true tale of how I escaped the Enemy's fortress," Russandol said, laughing at her melodrama. "Lord Oropher, I can speak to the people, if you are not averse to it." 

Frost dotted the ground and the eaves. I unwrapped my cloak and set it about Artanis. She scowled, but nestled into it. Oropher's warriors and mine were watchful as their people amassed in the courtyard. 

"When we came to these shores, we cremated men by the hundreds, after the first battle against the Enemy. The crown had come to me, for my father had fallen. I looked to Melian's people, to you, and learned from your ways that to celebrate life was paramount when it could be easily taken away by war or beast or nature's vagary." 

Russandol had ever been a fine orator, but I had not heard him speak in Sindarin before. The roll and twist of the consonants, different from the laymen's Sindarin and the one Thingol's court favored, was of an older time. Our courtiers had often implored him to relearn the language, and he had waved them away, stating that as long as he was understood he saw little reason to change his patterns of speech. Doriath's people watched him warily. It was the best that we could have hoped for. At least, they had not rioted. 

"I wish that we had met under kinder Gods," he continued, voice threading into it the persuasive earnestness that had characterized his finest speeches. "I wish that we had not met first upon steel and blood. I had sent word to your King, begging him to surrender my father's jewel." There were murmurs of disbelief and anger in the crowds. "We are here, now, you and I. I bear the bloodguilt of your families, and of mine. We have winter ahead, but we have our lives yet. Set aside your vengeance and your grief, and celebrate life with me, this once, tonight, if not for your sake, for the sake of your children. Tomorrow, you may hate us again." 

The celebration was muted. The children, as ever, were the first to take heart, to find excitement and joy in the firecrackers. 

"You speak Sindarin in the manner my mother had spoken it," Oropher remarked then, looking at Maedhros. "As it had been before Melian brought to the language script and grammar and syntax."

"I learned it in captivity," Russandol offered. "Another prisoner taught me."

"You did not unlearn it afterwards?" Oropher queried. "I imagine your courtiers must have pressed you to."

"I have little desire to repudiate what I have left of someone who loved me," my brother replied. 

_Love it was that dictated her every choice._

I had always been possessive of my brother. I could not bring myself to resentment and jealousy then. I could not even bring myself to begrudge how he looked at Oropher, with wistfulness and regret. He looked at Oropher as I had seen him looking upon Ereinion, I realized. 

I remembered Artanis's warning, of the little time we had left, and went to my brother. He leaned on me when I offered my arm. Over the years, he had slowly changed, in no longer hiding his physical weakness from me, in longer letting his fierce independence stand in the way of accepting my help. Artanis joined us. Together, we lit our sticks at the torches, and watched the chemicals turn into sound and light and woodsmoke, blazing as circles of bright light defying winter's dark.

* * *

**Lupercal**

  
They were sensitive children. I watched them warily as they tended to the wounded. 

It had been a fray unexpected. Círdan's people had been attacked by orcs on the road to Lindon. I had fortunately been leading a hunt in the region and had managed to end the attack. We had brought the wounded home to our healing halls. Círdan himself, shaken and scraped, was standing beside me morosely, no doubt calculating the likelihood of how many of the wounded would make it through the night. 

The children had not seen death before. I ruminated if I should send them away. They had been riding with me on the hunt. Their blades had tasted the enemy's blood. They were shaken afterwards, but they had insisted on staying in the halls of healing, to put their skills to use in helping the wounded. 

Death on the battlefield was sharp and brutal. The survivors mourned and carried on. I was glad that my brother was not there. He would not leave a battlefield until he had given the final mercy to enemy or ally, if there were any still clinging to life with mortal wounds. The children had been disturbed by all that they had seen, and I was glad that they had not seen his sense of mercy. 

Death in the healing halls, afterwards, was a malingering and cruel one, unbalanced between the hope of recovery and the sudden crash of it. 

They were children, even if they were not mine. When I looked at them, I saw Turkáno. They would not be spared any of this, not with the blood that ran in them. 

I could spare them as long as I breathed.

"You may return to your rooms now, Elrond, Elros," I called out. 

They came to me, quiet and terrified. 

"Two of them are not responding well to the herbs," Elros muttered. Elrond's face was waxen, blood-spattered. 

"My lords," Círdan began, no doubt to say something placating and ill-phrased. He was a rustic mariner calcified in his mannerisms, with little notion of how to treat children. I may not have been fond of Ereinion, but I had to wonder if Findekáno's get would have turned out differently had someone other than Círdan raised him.

"Ah there you are!" 

My brother bustled in, still in his riding clothes. I raised an eyebrow at him. He shook his head, secretive about his comings and goings as he often was. I could see no mud or blood on him, so I decided to let him be. His eyes were full of knowing as he took in our group. He beckoned forward an attendant. 

"Where are my manners as a host?" He said easily. "Lord Círdan, please follow the valet to the rooms we have prepared for you. He shall lead you to dinner afterwards."

Círdan gave him a broad smile, uncouth and awkward, before nodding and taking himself away. _I_ had been the one to save his people, and he had not yet thanked me. I could see my brother's amusement at my scowl. I scowled again. 

"Elros, Elrond," my brother said sharply, shaking them from their horrified quietness. "You have done well. Now come away. A bath, and then dinner."

"These people-" 

"You cannot do anything more for them."

"If they pass in the night-" Elrond's voice was shaking but determined. "If they pass in the night, I shall not have them alone." 

"Death is a solitary adventure, Elrond," Russandol said gently, chivvying us out of the halls, into the corridors towards our rooms.

A strange choice of words, I thought, alarmed, seeing how the boys looked to each other in horror anew. They had been born together. They were close, no doubt due to the early tragedies of their lives. They could scarcely go a night apart from each other, before turning restless and worried. 

"Death is a solitary adventure, but mourning is not," Russandol said, reaching to draw Elrond to him once we were in the privacy of our quarters. 

Elrond went easily, sobbing. Elros stood still, wanting, but nervous. Russandol looked to me hapless, before sighing and raising his maimed arm. Elros cried out and rushed to him. 

He loathed exposing the children to the disfigurement. Perhaps it was because they were a curious pair, but I suspected it was only that he preferred to shield from them the cruelty of the Enemy. 

My brother was not one to be tactile. He had left the care and keeping of the children to me. He had treated them kindly, had seen to their education and training, but had not been the one to speak of them of life or heart. It had surprised me in the beginning to see his detachment. He had loved children so, once. Artanis told me that it was unsurprising; he had little use for attachment as he hewed himself into a creature of purpose. 

Gratitude seized me. He had intervened because he had seen I was at a loss. He stood there, speaking to them softly, letting them weep, because I had not known what to do for them. I turned away, mumbling something about seeing to a bath and then dinner. 

"We have a tradition among our people. A celebration of life," Russandol told Círdan at dinner. "A festival of lights."

"I have heard of this," Círdan said slowly. "Some of the older Noldor in Lindon practice it. Ereinion Gil-Galad does not."

Ereinion had burned every bridge between my brother and him. He loathed my brother, believing that Findekáno's attachment to my brother had turned him an orphan. I pitied the lad, but I wished someone would dare tell him that Findekáno wanted none of his get squandered about Beleriand, that Findekáno may not have even known the name of the woman who had mothered the lad. My brother had claimed him and named him on the eve of the last battle in Beleriand, much to Findekáno's outrage, much to our family's dismay. Russandol had beseeched Círdan to raise the child, and the crown had gone to the boy after Turkáno's fall. I met Ereinion for matters of diplomacy occasionally, to see what to do about the children we raised as ours. He was High-King, after all. Even if he would not consent to give my brother an audience, Artanis and Telpe had convinced him to open a channel of communication with me. 

"Well, we are not under Ereinion's roof now, are we?" Russandol said cheerfully, giving away none of the sorrow that I knew plagued him when he heard of Ereinion's scorn and spite. "I shall see to the materials and rouse our household. Elrond, Elros, come with me? I shall require assistance."

Elros and Elrond were excited by the display of lights and fire, and the cheer on their faces heartened me as I watched them. My brother was explaining the composition of the materials in the firecrackers to Círdan, eager and enthusiastic as he ever was in the Mariner's company. If I had had the energy, I would have scowled at them. Whatever did he see in the loutish ancient? 

"We have a practice of speaking to the people on these occasions," Russandol said. "Perhaps you should do us the honors this year, Elrond, Elros."

"They will not accept us-" Elros began cautiously. 

"You are my family," Russandol cut in. "You are my heirs." 

That silenced them. I had to press a hand to my mouth to stifle my sob. 

The children turned to look at me for permission, terrified and yet keen. I nodded, smiling at my brother's ploy to lift their spirits while teaching them too. They stepped forward together. Death might be a solitary adventure, but life was not. Their words were stuttering to begin with, unsure and clumsy, before they steadied each other and spoke to our people. They looked to me every now and then for approbation. Whatever they saw on my face must have settled them, because they grinned and continued boldly. There was cheering and laughter, and a celebration of life. 

I turned to watch the life I celebrated. He was ailing. His health had deteriorated rapidly after the last battle in Beleriand. What strength remained in him had broken after Turkáno's fall, after the kinslaying in Doriath. I felt a sense of futility for the centuries I had wasted in avoiding him. If I had been at his side earlier, if I had been there to check his recklessness, if I had been there to help him carry the oath, if I had been there merely to hold him through the lonely nights he spent watching the Thangorodrim- 

As if sensing my gaze on him, he looked up at me and grinned. The love in his eyes was a visceral thing that I wanted to kiss him right then and there, under a canopy of lights. 

* * *

**Apotheoses**

  
"I was thinking-" 

"A dangerous pursuit," Findaráto interrupted. "Why don't you toddle off and find a fiddle or a lute?"

I loved him. I had wept for him when news had come from Beren's camp. He was a silly twit and I wanted to throw a paperweight at him. Love did not say anything about the lobbing of paperweights. 

He gave me a wounded, woebegone look. With his head full of gold and his eyes of innocence, I would have been taken in for a fool, if not for my long exposure to his sister.

"I am inured to it, you lumbering kitten," I said wryly. "If I weren't, Artanis would have had me conquering kingdoms in her name long ago."

"You cannot even exert yourself to catch a fat marsh hare," he accused me. "Kingdoms require considerable work. I was a King, you know."

"A poor one, I was sure. Your nephew usurped you, cousin dearest."

He laughed at that; he had always been quick to forgive. Our family had not deserved him. 

"What were you thinking?" He asked me then. 

"A celebration of life," I confessed. "Perhaps we could reinstate our festival of lights."

"What has brought this on, Macalaurë?" Findaráto queried, concerned. 

Our family were one again, but we were shattered. Turkáno could not leave our house without relapsing into panic, fearful that he might return to find us slaughtered, to find himself alone again. Artanis was worn down by her lonely struggle as she carried on the war despite her mourning, despite her daughter's repudiation, despite her husband's betrayals. Findaráto grieved for Elu Thingol. Findekáno and my father were ridden by guilt. Each of us, in our own way, was struggling to accept where we found ourselves, afraid to blink lest we find ourselves in a crueler place. 

Nolofinwë, bless him, was struggling to keep us grounded. 

I had fared better than most, but my emotional state was as a faithful weather-vane set to my brother's well-being. He remembered little of the past and existed in blissful oblivion. His equanimity and lack of grief had settled me. 

In times of old, in another life, I would not have thought past my selfishness. I had changed. Long centuries of wandering alone, waiting for Artanis to sail, had warped my perspective on what mattered. I had missed my family then, even those I had begrudged. I had realized, in my solitude, how deeply fortunate I had been.

I had seen how lonely Ereinion had been and how lonely Celebrian had been. In Valinor, I had seen Earwen and Arafinwë, and my mother Nerdanel, and how they clung to the past to give themselves purpose. Those of us who had left for Arda, my cousins and my brothers, we had known war and grief, but we had also known great joys as a family. Those we left behind had no consolation, no ephemeral joys. A life without a cause for celebration was merely existence. 

I did not fancy myself as particularly prone to sympathy for the suffering of others, but I had seen more than the rest of them had. I had outlived all of them and had grieved them alone for long ages of the world. 

I had clung to faith in a man who had leapt into a chasm. It had taken his loss to see how he had celebrated life every day, in his own way, regardless of whether he had been alone or in company. The first and the last of his oaths had been an oath to live. 

I had looked at life as death's anteroom. He had not. _Death is a solitary endeavor_ , he had taught Elros and Elrond. He had also lived solitarily, even when he had companionship, as a conjurer keeping his secrets close. He had not minded. I realized that only after I had lost him. He had known a quiet ease in solitude that I could never teach myself despite my fate.   
  
"Macalaurë?" Findaráto urged, worried, as he came to me. "What is wrong?"

"We must celebrate life. We are alive, are we not?" 

"Alive, if the term applies," he allowed, sitting beside me. "We were fished out of the Void by our cousin's nefarious schemes and dumped into a creation of no God's make."

I glared at him. I had little patience for his sarcasm right then. 

He softened then, and said, "Very well. To Nolofinwë, then, my dear Macalaurë. Let us hawk your idea to our uncle and procure his blessings."

Nolofinwë did not naysay us on any matter in these latter days. He was more preoccupied in ensuring that none of us slipped into panic or anxiety as we brooded on the events of the past, or on those we had loved and lost. He had always borne on his shoulders mistakes that were not his to bear. And I had once wondered where Russandol had picked up his assortment of inconvenient ideals from. 

"I used to keep the rite in Nargothrond," Findaráto said, as we walked together in search of our uncle. Turkáno and Findekáno had kept it too.

"Orodeth kept it afterwards," I confessed. 

Ereinion and Elrond and Elros had all gone on to keep it. As had Telpe and Gildor and Círdan. I had seen the descendants of Numenor keep it in Gondor and in Umbar. Celebrian had brought the ritual to Valinor. I wondered if she had learned of it from her mother or from her husband. It must have been a rite she had learned in Imladris. Artanis had refrained from polluting her husband's home with the ways of the Noldor. 

"He feared that the sole legacy he would leave would be that of the oath," Findaráto commented then. 

My thoughts had been running along the same course. I remembered him coming to me after our father's death, as I stood staring helplessly at the anvil that was warm yet. Russandol had been a King that night, as he held our people to him. _New rites for a new people. Let us celebrate life. Let us celebrate a festival of lights._

"You marked the festival by the Mithrim even when he was held captive," Findaráto continued thoughtfully. 

"I continued to observe it after his death," I admitted. 

The last time I marked it, I had stood with my mother and with Celebrian, with my wife and with Arafinwë, in Tirion. We had espied Artanis's sails that morning. We had begun preparing for war. As we stood in a circle of light, I had spoken the words my brother had spoken to our people that first time on Arda's shores.

"I cannot fathom how you clung to life, cousin," Findaráto whispered, clutching my arm. "I could not imagine what I might have done, in your place-"

"He had asked only one promise of me. He had asked me to keep faith." 

I hated the weariness in my voice. What cause had I for sadness, in these days of no God's make? 

"Elu was easy to love," Findaráto murmured. "I cannot imagine that Russandol was easy to love, as he had been then."

I was fixed in my affections, when it came to the romantic. There had been Artanis. There had been my brother always. That was the extent of my romances. I had married, but merely as a token to settle the court which had taken umbrage when Findaráto, Findekáno, and Russandol had all refused to marry and sire an heir. It had also served to take me from my brother, which I had gladly then taken advantage of. 

Findaráto was not the first to venture that my brother must have been hard to love. I doubted that it was the truth. How many of us had loved him? He had never spoken of it, but Artanis and I suspected the truth of Elerrína and him. There had been Hurin saving him from Gothmog in the last war of Beleriand. Whatever madness and cruelty Findekáno and he had once between them, there had been a distorted love too. My father had claimed that he had once kept house with the wizard Artanis called Gandalf. I thought of Mablung, who had the come to feast for Nolofinwë's coronation. Then there were the half-truths Artanis and I had eked out about Sauron. 

No, I did not think my brother had been hard to love. _I_ had found it hard to love him. I blamed that squarely on myself. I had been possessive and selfish. I had hated his secret-keeping and feared his lack of self-preservation. I had never ceased mourning him from the day he had walked jauntily to meet Morgoth in parley. I had held his death against him long before he had walked into a chasm. I had, perhaps, always known that he would leave me to linger, to keep faith, to relearn the shape of my love for him as I relearned myself. 

At the end, when Artanis and I stood hand in hand before the Gods, hallowed by white fire, before the statue of Miríel, when the tides rose and the land cleaved, when the Silmarilli unmade all that was, I had seen the man I was. If I were to do it all over again, I promised myself, I would learn to love him as he was, instead of how I wanted him to be.

I had endeavored to keep that promise. I succeeded on some days. He had forgotten everything. While he remembered snippets and glimmers on occasion, Artanis was sure that he would never remember the entirety of his life in context and in completion. Good. If there was luck remaining to me, he would never remember my jealousy or my resentments, he would never remember how I had held grudges for decades or forced him to apologize over and over again for slights real or perceived.   
  
"He drove me spare," I told Findaráto, forcing lightness into my voice. "That, I admit, was often the draw."

We found Russandol and Nolofinwë in our uncle's office, working together on their tasks of administration and commerce. _Plotting_ , really. I suppressed a grin and pressed a finger to my lips turning to Findaráto. Eavesdropping was our family's finest pursuit, after all. 

"Do you suppose I can convince Irissë to wed if I allowed her to explore the lands with Tyelko?" Our uncle lamented. 

Two lifetimes and he had not yet given up his hope to see Irissë and Tyelko married. Poor Uncle. He had wanted to see at least a single one of us happily wedded. He had only had the chance once, when he conducted my marriage, and it had been a splendid affair that none of us had been in the frame of mind to celebrate. Irissë and Tyelko had drunk more than they ought to have, and had brawled at the reception. Findekáno and Russandol had indulged in their strange pursuits and we had had to turn a deaf ear to Russandol's screams and cries of pain. Artanis had been spiteful and cutting, and had driven my new wife to tears. It had not been a happy wedding. 

"They enjoy living in sin, uncle," Russandol said evenly, not looking up from his calculations of taxation and fines. 

"Make them marry," Nolofinwë demanded, crossing his arms. 

Russandol remembered little, but he had always been weak to our uncle's whims. Whatever _pietas_ there was in him had only been directed towards Nolofinwë. 

"Irissë will see us both drowned in the river," Russandol replied, laughing, finally taking his attention away from parchments. "Very well, uncle, let us scheme. Perhaps we can pressure Tyelko. He is more susceptible to our demands. We merely need promise him the leeway to hunt where he wants."

"We cannot!" Nolofinwë exclaimed. "He wants to hunt those rabbits the children in the villages have begun to gather as pets."

"They are pests that multiply tenfold in weeks. He is not wrong to want to cull them."

"The children pout, Russandol. I have no heart for it."   
  
"Is this how you run your government?" Findaráto interrupted, entering the chamber, humming a Sindarin lay of copulating rabbits against a summer moon. 

Nolofinwë had never learned Sindarin outside the matters of state. He knew Findaráto well enough to glean the gist of the lay. His scowl silenced my cousin swiftly.

"What brings you here?" He demanded. "I doubt it is to help us with our chores."

"You appointed yourselves to this office," Findaráto pointed out. "Forgive us for having no compassion to aid your addled pursuits. We came by to bring an excellent idea to you." 

I moved to my brother and my heart sang when he smiled at me. I let my hands stray to the tangled curls of his hair in a bid to neaten it. An exercise in futility, as endeavoring to swim upstream, but I had not given up in two lifetimes. He leaned the weight of his head into my palm easily, trusting. 

"We should renew our observance of the festival of lights," I told our uncle. 

He was hesitant, no doubt unwilling to mar the peace of our times with rites that hailed from Arda. He fretted that it may trigger a return of memories in my brother. I trusted Artanis. She had promised me that my brother would never remember his past in entirety. 

"It is only a celebration of life," I pleaded. 

"We won because we kept faith," Findaráto chimed in, persuasively. "Let us keep faith now, and celebrate the life we have, even if it be not of Eru's make." 

"What does this festival involve?" Russandol enquired, curious about the past as he ever was. 

"Firecrackers, cake, dancing, alcohol," Findaráto explained cheerfully. I suppressed a grin at his words. On Arda, we had celebrated after funerals, after cremations, after losses, to remind ourselves that we were _alive_.

"We did not-" Nolofinwë began, no doubt to correct Findaráto. 

"A new rite for a new people, Nolofinwë."

Findaráto used the same words my brother had, all those lifetimes ago, when he had stood addressing our people by the cold lake after the crown had come to him after our father's fall. 

Nolofinwë's eyes flickered between us, before he nodded. 

"No orgies," he cautioned. 

Findaráto raised an eyebrow. In Tirion, our Grandfather had moved Nolofinwë to a separate wing due to his propensity to host orgies. 

"I am a responsible parent now," Nolofinwë defended himself. "I am planning my children's marriages!"

Findaráto whistled and left. I was about to follow him, when Nolofinwë said, "Macalaurë, stay a moment." 

He ran to the door and barred it from new eavesdroppers, a wise decision given how our family carried on. 

"What is it?" Russandol asked, concerned. 

"You could marry," our uncle suggested, conniving and evil. "I could still plan a wedding for the spring!"

Russandol fell silent, shocked. We had only begun to learn each other in intimacy over a period of mere months. Our relationship was new to him, even if it was not new to me. Nolofinwë had forgotten what it was to be in the nascent bloom of a romance, with the tender uncertainties as to where it might lead, as to what awaited after the next turn as two souls unveiled themselves to each other and learned to be seen in obscene vulnerability. Our uncle had merely spoken in carelessness, remembering our past. Nolofinwë must have realized how he had miscalculated, because he looked at me haplessly. 

I suppressed a grin. 

"If you wanted Russandol to scheme Tyelko and Irissë into marrying, you could have gone about it another way," I remarked, placing my hands on my brother's shoulders and pressing a kiss to his blush-warmed cheek. 

After I had taken my leave of them, I wandered to the orchards, deep in thought.

I endeavored to be a better lover than the one I had been, and went out of my way to be tactile, to bestow upon my brother these gestures of affection. In the long years of solitude after his death, I had rued my memories of his yearning face, as he sought my affection unobtrusively, afraid to spook me. It had taken solitude and introspection to understand the source of his fears. I had never been drawn to the male form. My affection, while romantic, had been of the abstract sort. I had placed him on a pedestal and had been content composing odes for him from afar, as long as nobody else touched him. I had, for many centuries, nursed a strong aversion to the physicality of our bond, stuck upon the taboo of incest. After we had found our way to each other's arms, after I had managed to repress my aversions, we had found ourselves sexually incompatible. He had yielded to my preferences, to soft lovemaking and to near-chaste embraces. His inclinations, he had kept hidden under wraps, but I had gleaned that he enjoyed a degree of roughness. It had scandalized me then. 

Later, in my years of solitude, I realized that I had found myself repulsed by what my icon on a pedestal had desired. I had not learned to see him as flawed flesh and blood that _yearned_ , having cast him into an ideal of perfection. He had worn his masks of detachment well. I was not the only one who had fallen into the trap of thinking him sexless. 

In lethe, he remembered nothing of our sexual incompatibility of the past or how he had hidden it from me. He had taught me his preferences easily, without coyness, and I had come to enjoy them all. Armed by the wealth of introspection, I had learned how to open my arms to him in desire without placing him on a pedestal. We had not been equals before, despite the unshakeable love that had bound us. I could not resent him anymore, for the past, not when he had wrought for us the chance to finally meet as equals. 

"Deep ponderings on the nature of matter?"

"Artanis," I greeted her, stepping neatly into her line of sight so that she could stop gawking at the woodcutters in the orchards. She could never resist a well-muscled torso. 

"Cease!" She demanded, but took my arm anyway, and accompanied me on my aimless walk. 

There were dark circles about her eyes. She had been restless during the nights again. Sleep came ill to her, when it did at all. 

"Call for me," I chided her. My music and songs seemed to give her a measure of deep sleep, just as it had once helped my brother find his rest. 

"You would be busy copulating," she muttered, scrunching her nose in disdain. "You have this smug look about you in the mornings when we sit down for breakfast." 

I did not respond to that calumny. My brother was whimsical in his attentions. While I was not _pent-up_ , I had come to notice that our libidos ran along different intensities. I had little to complain of. His libido had been non-existent in the last decades of his life on Arda. If I was taken to bed and ravished only every other night or two, I would gladly settle for it and count my blessings. 

There were other treats on the nights we did not make love. He would let himself be held and we would speak in hushed voices of what we had seen and done during our day, our chatter interspersed with laughter and kisses. 

He had not been prone to conversation in bed before. I suspect he had considered the matter at length and found the venue susceptible to accidentally spilling the secrets he kept, and done away with the policy of chatter in bed.   
  
That day, I found myself occupied with Irissë and Findaráto as we planned the festival of lights. I had not been one to participate in planning events or celebrations, but I had changed and I was glad for it. If Irissë or Findaráto found my sudden passion for menus and ribbons perplexing, they were kind enough to say nothing of it. Love overwhelmed me. They had never held my nature of then against me. They had found me peculiar, no doubt, obsessive as I had been in my affection for my brother and my blindness to all else. Regardless of what they had thought of me then, they had called me family nonetheless and loved me so. 

When I returned to our quarters, I heard Artanis's voice as she complained about this or that. Sighing, I opened the door to find her in my armchair by the hearth, holding court with her vassal of one. My brother had seated himself at her feet and was massaging her dainty ankles as he half-listened to whatever she was prattling on about. 

"Really, Artanis?" I asked her, laughing. "Jellyfish venom as an aphrodisiac?" 

"What would you know? I am the herbalist, the lore master, the Wise! You play a flute."

"He plays it well," Russandol said valiantly. 

My choice of vocation certainly did not compare. I shook my head and went to the mantel to pour us wine. 

"Are you staying?" I asked her. 

"Fëanáro is taking Irissë and I to the markets tomorrow. To shop for new gowns for the festival," she said, yawning. "I had best make for bed. You know how obscenely early he sets out."

My father was the rare early riser in our family. He ran on adrenaline and curiosity, and likely considered sleep a necessary evil that was an utter waste of time. He had a good eye for women's fashions. Little wonder why Artanis and Irissë were willing to put up with his early hours when it came to accompanying him to the markets. 

"I could have sent for a tailor," Russandol said mildly. 

"Cousin! I shan't know what I want until I see it." 

He had always had gowns made for Irissë and Artanis during the feasts they had attended together on Arda. It had amused me often. He had little idea of women's fashions and would commission tailors of renown. He had no idea what their measurements were, and his guesswork had little root in reality. I doubted that before Elerrína he had seen a grown woman's body in close quarters. Our cousins had been too kind to mock him for the ill-fitting gowns they ended up with. Artanis would wear them. Her statuesque beauty ensured that nobody would notice the flaws of her clothing. She had worn one of those gowns to her wedding, she had written to me. She had worn one of those gowns when she stood beside me to cremate my brothers. She had worn one of those gowns, the last he had gifted her, of spider silk and woven gold, to her death, when she had waged her final battle against the Gods. I remembered the resplendent figure she had cut in that gown, unafraid and strong. _Keep your faith_ , she had told me, as she had cut the thread of fate, as she had slain dreams, as she had called the Silmarilli from earth and sky and sea to her, as around us a conjurer's secrets unfolded.

I had seen my brother walk to his death. He had bestirred himself from his exhaustion and raving, rambling madness to ask me to dress him in the only set of robes he had kept from Valinor after our years in Arda: robes of black and red. He had never liked black. The garnets on the robes were the crimson of his hair. The leaves that wrapped about the torso had matched the star-spun silver of his eyes that I had written odes to long before I had known my heart's truth. I had not known until I had met Ingwë many centuries later that those robes had been gifted to my brother by his teacher, Gandalf. _Red falls the dew on these silver leaves_ , Ingwe had reminisced, telling me of that tale of love. His teacher and his lover who he had kept house with in Valmar, according to my father. Artanis and my father held that they had been lovers until my brother had sailed east with us.

He had kept his secrets well, from the beginning. I did not know when he had fallen in love with me. Artanis wagered it was after his return from Angband. I suspected it must have been earlier. He had never said anything of it when I had once dared enquire. 

In this godless land, at least I knew when he had looked at me first in want. I suspected his love for me was still a nascent bloom, unlike mine or his of old that had weathered gods and fate. It was a joy to see him stumbling into love, as he sought to please me and seek my thoughts on this or that to learn me better. 

"I am off to bed, brother," he said then. "Shall you join me?" 

He asked me each time, courteous to offer me an exit if I might decline. I suppressed a grin at his chivalry and led the way to our bed. He did not know yet that it was _our_ bed, but he would eventually come to terms with my refusal to evacuate. My bed in my quarters lay unused for months. Turkáno had begun dumping his books there, terrible parasite that he was. 

"Were you lovers?" He asked curiously. "She speaks of you so fondly."

"Of a sort," I admitted, seeing no harm in telling him of it. Once, he might have fretted in insecurity, knowing that my tastes ran towards women. "We were friends, before and during and after."

"I wonder if I had someone as that in my life...before," he said hesitantly. "It would be cruel to them to have forgotten."

"You were a secretive bastard," I said, with utmost affection. "I doubt you were given to dalliances of domesticity." 

The closest he had come to seeing a friend with a glance of curiosity had been Círdan. Thankfully, for all of us, the Mariner had been oblivious. My brother was not given to polygamy, but he did have quaint notions utterly at odds with social mores about what love meant. I did not think he would have taken another lover, but he had not been bound up in the same ideals of monogamy as the rest of us. I blamed Nolofinwë for his slipshod morals. My father was a deeply passionate and monogamous man, after all. 

"Surely I must have confided in somebody!" he was exclaiming, as he took off his cloak and boots. "I cannot go on for even a day now, before spilling all my mundane whatnots to you." 

"Keep on just so," I ordered him, making ready for bed. I donned a nightgown, for propriety's sake. He stripped swiftly and folded his clothes with customary neatness, before slipping into bed with me. Regardless of whether he initiated intimacy or not, he was fond of sleeping in the nude. I ought to be scandalized. I could not bring myself to it. "Keeping secrets is a terrible practice. I forbid it."

He hummed, mulling it over. I turned to rest my head on an elbow to look down on his dear face. A splash of color touched his cheeks when he noticed my besotted gaze.

"You look at me so."

"How do I look at you, pray tell?" 

There was no answer he could speak that would frighten me. 

"As Artanis looks at oysters," he murmured, looking away, unsettled. 

"She is fond of the little grubs," I teased him. I bent to take his mouth with mine, before moving to the length of his neck bared to me. "She is fond of suckling them fresh, ripe with river's salt and scent." He had not bathed before bed, what with us having turned in late. The smell he wore was of himself and I inhaled deeply of it. His heartbeat was loud against my palm. 

"Shall I see to you?" I asked. He did seem to be edging towards arousal. When his hands came to drag me atop him, I had my answer. 

"I can ride you," I offered. 

He enjoyed that very much, whenever we attempted it. In the beginning, I had been mortified to be seen so, but his arousal and his pleas when I had been astride him had wiped away my embarrassment. 

"I doubt I will able to summon an erection for you so handily," he said, laughing. "Have me, please. We shall see if that leads us to a ride." 

I rolled my eyes at his nonsense and kissed him quiet. He spread his legs with abandon and let me take. His sighs, as I dragged pleasure in and out of him, were obscene. The sight of him, helplessly luxuriating in what I did, tugged at my gut. When I came in him, he caught me by the hips and lifted me off to sit me upon his cock. I cursed at the extremity of stimulus, but he was unrelenting, lifting me and plunging me back down without a moment's reprieve. 

I woke to his hand tracing idle caresses on my back. I must have fainted when I climaxed again. 

"You startled me, when you fell on me a deadweight," he murmured. 

"You fucked the living daylights out of me," I said, trying to scowl, but even I could not scowl after two excellent orgasms. My heart was skittering madly and my eyes still saw black at the edges. At least, I would sleep well. 

"Are you all right? Shall I fetch you water?" 

"One orgasm a night, please. My heart shan't take more."

"You don't find consistent pleasure in my bed," he said thoughtfully. 

Here was my chance to be a different man from the one I had been in the past, once more. I wished my mind was more than dribbled yolk, to demonstrate how I had changed, to how I had become a soul of wisdom and acceptance. I would have to make a go of it, as I were. 

"My libido and my pleasure are different things, Russandol," I explained to him. "I find my pleasure when we share intimacy. My libido is likely a product of inheritance. I have no say over it, and it has no say over me."

There, that sounded wise. Artanis would be proud. 

"Was my sexual appetite as...irregular before?" He asked curiously. He did not seen disgruntled or fretful. Good. Curiosity, I could handle with ease. 

Then, before I could say a word, he gasped, saying, "It must have been worse. I have heard I was ill for a very long time. That cannot have proven conducive to my sexual appetite." 

"Sexual appetite reminds me of oysters. Stop saying that," I complained, neatly sidestepping his conclusions. His cleverness and perception remained troublesome to my neat schemes to live happily with him.

"Whatever did you have from me?" He wondered. "I doubt it was sex. I doubt it was riches or protection or alliances. It cannot have been a true companionship, from what you say of my secret-keeping. What did I have to give you?" 

He resumed caressing my hair and back. He was not upset, I told myself. He was merely curious. My postcoital lassitude had gone out the window, thanks to his findings. Troublesome creature. Why did he bother to fuck me out of my mind if he could not bother to let me enjoy the aftermath in peace? 

"Macalaurë?"

"I had you," I said quietly. " _I am here_ , you promised me, so many times over our lives. You kept every promise you made to me. I had you."

He had nothing to say to that, relapsing into quiet rumination. I took the chance and promptly fell asleep. 

In the morning, I woke to him watching me. 

"You are a marvel, my dearest Kano," he told me. 

There were secrets in his gaze, but my sleep-fogged brain decided to let him be. Besides, he had called me _Kano_. He had only called me so when he had been greatly moved, a handful of times over our lives. 

" _I am here_ , I promised you. And you kept faith," he said quietly, taking my hands in his and drawing them to his lips to press many kisses to my knuckles. 

"Russandol-" 

I was suddenly alert, shaken up as I realized he had pieced together parts of the story last night after I had fallen asleep and left him to his musings. He had held the Gods at bay for four ages of the world, setting into motion a convoluted strategy that had been won after his death. What hope had I to pull the wool over his eyes? 

"We were wedded," he stated. "That is what you had of me."

 _Whatever did you have of me?_ he had asked the night before. 

"Yes," I confessed, knowing there were tears in my eyes.

We had wedded before he leapt into a chasm. I had not known that we had been wedded, until many centuries later, flames of white had taken me from the world that was without harming me. This was par on the course, for my life with my brother. He had not bothered to tell me anything. My conjurer and his secrets. 

"It must be right after I saved you from a dragon," he said brightly, happy again after solving his puzzle of the night. "That must have been very romantic. You must have swooned into my arms."

Perhaps I ought to have swooned into his arms, after he had stood between a dragon and my retreat. I had instead spent decades not speaking to him. 

"There was a great deal of swooning involved," I assured him. "You swept me off my feet so many times that I no longer believed in gravitational forces."

He rolled his eyes and came closer to kiss me. 

"It isn't merely curiosity," he said, as he got out of our bed and made to dress for the day. Riding clothes. He must mean to hunt with Findekáno, I noted abstractly. 

"I wonder, every now and then, if you regret having lost the man you loved. Without his memories, I am different, aren't I? I wonder if you seek a substitute for him. I wonder if it disappoints you."

I saw another opportunity to demonstrate myself as the wise man I had decided to become. 

"My dearest Russandol, if I could have set your memories on fire and destroyed them myself, I would have. Gladly. Without an iota of remorse." 

He raised his eyebrows at that, and said delicately, "This family of mine is set upon my oblivion, I have come to notice." 

"Just so," I said sweetly. "Off with you. " 

I had once nicked the arteries of his charger to keep him at home, to stay his recklessness, when I had come to Himring to find him leading warriors to the forsaken plains in desperation to forget our uncle's death. I had not flinched at crippling mute animals to keep him safe. He knew nothing of how I had loved him. He knew nothing of what I had done for him, of what I would do for him. It was for the best that he did not remember. I was a changed and wise man, but I had not turned to virtue. 

In the evening, as I came back to my quarters to ready myself for the festival, I noticed a brocaded package on my bed. It was neatly wrapped, and I noticed how the creases lay sharp. I swallowed, remembering the last time I had seen that manner of folding on a package. With unsteady hands, I unknotted the twine and unwrapped the brocade. 

Sighing, I sat on my unused bed and ran a trembling hand over the lapels of the robe. I was weeping, I realized, and could not bring myself to cease. There were loud and excited voices in the corridors, and music without. A card fell onto my lap from the robes. His calligraphy was distinctive, a left-handed inscription. My tears blotted out a rune or two. 

\-----------------  
  
"My dear people, we are here to celebrate life." Nolofinwë beamed at the masses. "As my dearest nephew once said, in a new land we need new rites and rituals, to carve our identity anew. Let us do so now. Let us celebrate life, and the promise that there shall be no death, that we shan't raise our swords in war again, that we shan't be under the yoke of the powers again." 

I fain listened to his words, as I pressed through the throng seeking. Nolofinwë liked his speeches. Russandol had caught his penchant from oratory from him. 

"There you are," Findekáno murmured, shifting to give me room. 

Russandol was standing beside my father, speaking earnestly. They had never been on the best of terms before, but my father had changed as I had. My father managed to be on good terms with his children these days. I suspected Nolofinwë's influence. 

Children were running about, distributing firecrackers. I accepted mine from a little girl distractedly, trying to plot a way to my brother's side. 

"The robes suit you," Findekáno remarked then. There was mischief in his eyes as he continued, "You wore a similar set of robes at the feast Russandol hosted in Himring before the war."

"He had the robes made in Valmar long ago. He had meant to give it to me on the occasion of my wedding." I paused, wondering how to state the tale delicately. 

My brother and Findekáno had been drunk out of their wits for my wedding and I had feared that they had ended up killing each other with their madness that night. I had spent my wedding night waiting for my brother to return to his chambers, wanting to ascertain he made it back in one piece. I had found that he had ridden away to Himring before dawn broke, and only Findekáno had been there to see me off with my new bride. 

Findekáno cleared his throat.

"Well, he did not give it to me on the occasion of my wedding," I said awkwardly. "He gave it to me on the night of the feast in Himring." 

The silk of it had been woven from the silkworms in Lorien, at the looms of Vaire's handmaidens. It had been a dark blue, shifting to black in hues as the light struck it. A courting gift. He had taken me to bed that night. 

"He has been growing silkworms in the far western reaches of our lands for a few months now," Findekáno told me. "Perhaps his memories are not what you ought to fear."

"He is a frightening creature," I allowed. He may have lost his foresight, but he was still damnably perceptive and excelled at stitching together clues from what was said or left unspoken. 

"You and I are drawn to frightening creatures," Findekáno teased me. He meant no malice, I knew, as I watched his eyes linger on Artanis. We were birds of a feather, I rued. Shaking my head, I left him and went to join my brother.

"You look well," he remarked, when he noticed me. 

"I have netted for myself an admirer who clads me in finery," I teased him, pulling his face to me for a kiss. 

My father looked mildly scandalized but said nothing, his eyes watchful as he surveilled our people to see if anyone might take umbrage. I doubted anyone would. Russandol was known to be an odd duck. After everything our people had speculated about his sexuality over the centuries, I doubted that mere incest would turn their stomachs. Whatever he had done with Findekáno had set future expectations dismally low in the eyes of our people. 

My brother's arms came to enfold me, hands warm through the silk he had clad me in. I pressed my face to his breast, inhaling deeply of the familiar scent of him. 

"When did you know?" 

"I had suspected it from the beginning," he admitted, taking my hand in his, lighting our sticks of fire at our father's. We watched the circles blaze light against the night's dark. The first time we had done this, together, we had cremated our father mere hours before. 

"I may no longer have secrets to keep, but my dearest Macalaurë, you are not very good at keeping the ones you have," he teased me. 

"It is for your own good," I muttered. 

"Delightful bundle of nobility, aren't you?" He asked, charming, charmed, and it was all I could do to keep a besotted grin off my face. 

My father was watching us curiously. 

"Are you angry?" I asked him, wondering what he truly thought of us. He had roared at me in fury when he had first noticed my draw to Russandol. He had seen to the guts of my secret long before anyone else had. 

I had not thought that I needed our father's approbation. I trembled still, in my brother's hold. Russandol was not ruffled. Then again, he truly cared for nobody's approval but his own, for all the claims he made otherwise. I had admired this quality in him, before I had seen the darker side of it. _Even the finest are flawed_ , my father had been fond of saying. 

"I am not angry," our father said. He was picking his words with care, I could tell, his eyes thoughtful as he watched us. "It is not what I wanted for you, for either of you. You seem content. What have I to be angry about?"

I remembered him as he had been after making the Silmarilli, susceptible to wild mood-swings and a volatile temper. I had not realized how frightened of him I had been in those days. I had been _relieved_ when he had died. I had forgotten how he had been before, awkward but loving. He had no social graces whatsoever, but he had been generous and caring, in his own stilted ways. He had protected Artanis and I from her father's wrath when we had been carrying on. He had opened Formenos gladly to our cousins and had let them stay as long as they pleased, despite whatever the courtiers had to say about it. When our mother had left him, he had given her the finest of his forges as a parting gift. The last work of his hands had been the sword he had made for Nolofinwë. After our uncle's death, it had come to my brother. I had carried it after his death. 

My father and I had avoided each other as best as we could, in these lands of no God's make. I had not known how my unresolved fears and resentments had lingered deep within me. I feared his disapproval, even if I had no cause to. 

"Father-" 

"I am not angry, Macalaurë," he hastened to repeat. He cast a glance at my brother apprehensively, but Russandol did not intervene. 

"Nolofinwë asked us if we would wed," I blurted out. 

Whatever had I said? I blamed my brother for his silly gifts. He had courted me once with fine robes. I had headlong fallen into romantic notions, aided by Nolofinwë's silly fancies about weddings. 

"We are wed," my brother said calmly then. "You told me we were."   
  
He had made his vows and jumped into a chasm. I had not even realized there had been vows until my death. 

"That was before," I said, unwilling to enlighten him on his peculiar ways of wedding brothers. 

"Well, you cannot have it both ways," my brother replied reasonably. "If I am the same, with or without my memories, we remain wed. If I am not, then you will be marrying someone new you have known only for a matter of months. Which is it?" 

"Perhaps Macalaurë means a renewal of vows," our father interjected awkwardly. "It is a popular rite." This was the most he had stirred himself to involvement in any of his children's affairs, I was sure. I was taken with gratitude for his attempt.

"If you wish it," Russandol told me. 

He was looking at me as once he had looked at me when he had come to find me on the terraces of Formenos after a long journey he had undertaken to Lorien. I had then taken it for his happiness upon seeing me after a period of separation. Our father had begun working with Melkor and I had been terrified. I remembered clinging to my brother when he embraced me, unable to speak of my worries. _I am here_ , he had promised me, and I had found that I breathed again. 

I was wiser these days, and I stifled an exclamation as I understood the meaning writ in his gaze. This was the look of a man falling in love.

Artanis had lost her wager, I dimly thought. Not after Angband. Not after sailing East. He had fallen in love under our father's roof in Formenos. If I were my old self, I would have lamented the time wasted. As it stood, I could only sigh at how well he had kept his blasted secrets. 

"You gave me a courting gift," I said instead. "A renewal of vows is the least you must do now."

"I had a harvest of silk and little purpose for it," he retorted. 

"Well, what was the occasion then?" 

"Twelve months ago, I took you to my bed." 

"Our bed," I corrected him boldly. 

My brother laughed, before letting me kiss him again. "Our bed," he allowed graciously, easily, yielding as he had always when it came to my whims and wants. 

I had once thought he had been quick to placate me often merely because he doted on me as a brother. A lover did not know how to deny his heart its whims. And I had not seen that he loved. 

"Dance with me, Russandol!" 

Artanis. She cut a striking picture in her woolen gown of blue. 

"I could dance with you," I offered. "Russandol will only make you laugh and lose your step." 

She turned up her dainty nose in the air and dragged him away. The crowds cheered them on as they waltzed. While they were excellent dancers, the pair of them together was disastrous, tripping over each other's feet. They could not cease their arguing and banter to focus on their steps. He had danced with her at Findaráto's coronation, I remembered, and the sight of them had torn my heart. 

I turned to my father, to see him watching them keenly. 

"What is it?" I asked again, worried. 

"Irmo often would tell me that her hair had the light of Laurelin," my father replied. "Her father loved her dearly. We should have protected her. We should have left her in Alqualonde."

I thought of her killing her grandfather to save her father at the docks. I thought of her chambers in Doriath, bereft of her husband's possessions. I thought of how she had not celebrated the festival of lights after her marriage. She had fought Sauron and defeated him. She had mourned us alone for long ages of the world. I thought of how she had stood beside me and faced the Gods at the end, against rising tide and shifting earth and white flames, with the power of the Silmarilli. When she had fallen, her husband's screams had shattered the silence at world's end. 

"Arafinwe was proud of her," I said plainly. 

"As am I," my father said quietly. He turned to face me and dared press his hand to my shoulder, squeezing once, before letting go. "As am I."

I could not find the words to reply, light-headed as I had been made by his abrupt statement. My father discreetly slipped away, having had enough of family for the night. I decided to visit him occasionally. He was a hard man to know, but he did strive to change for our sake. 

"You should not fear him," my brother remarked. He had handed Artanis to Findekáno for the next dance and had come by to seek my hand. The flush of exertion lent him a lovely blush. "He is only a man. The authority you prescribe him is not one he knows to carry."

In another life, in another time, the words he used could have applied easily to how I viewed him too. When Findaráto had fallen in love with Elu Thingol, we had teased his inordinate fondness for authority figures, at how he sought paternal affection from his lovers. 

"What is it?"

"I have not danced with you before our people," I said, and wondered at the note of shyness in my voice. 

He held me close and danced with me quietly, watching me all the while. 

As the tunes changed to a livelier vein, he whispered, "Let us skip this one, shall we? I wore my second gift to you and it shan't allow me to keep pace with this music." 

Close to, in the torchlight, there was the flush of exertion on his brow. I placed my fingers at his pulse and found it staccato. I leaned in to press our bodies together and my thigh skimmed against his cock. Before he could say a single word, I had dragged him off. 

"The festival-"

I shook my head, running hot with desire, needing to learn whatever he had accoutered himself in that had led to him to be aroused in public. He had scarcely barred the doors behind him before I pulled him to our bed and stripped him in greed. 

"My robes are not of silk, but must you tear them?" He lamented, though there was mischief wild in his eyes as he let me rip off his clothes as a brute. 

My fingers struck a weighty object in him. Curious, I knelt before him and coaxed him to part his legs. 

Glass. There was a funnel of glass holding him open. I swallowed at the sight. I had never- 

The soft flesh of him inside was obscene in its lewd exposure to my gaze. I could see its ripples as he shifted, as he clenched. I nearly came then.   
  
"Macalaurë," he asked softly, placing his hands on my head as I gripped his thighs with bruising strength.

"You are mad," I said, with feeling. 

It took careful maneuvering, but he had what he wanted. He had me fucking him through the funnel. I lasted only because I was terrified of harming him. He had no such compunction and gave himself over to pleasure easily. When I came, I settled between his thighs and watched in fascination as my seed clung between the glass and his flesh. Shaking my head at the pervert he had turned me into, I carefully extracted the funnel despite his lazy protests, and suckled him clean relishing in how he squirmed and thrashed. 

He dragged me up for a filthy kiss. I lamented the fall of my virtue, but could not bring myself to regret it too badly. When I cast my gaze about, I laughed at the sight he made, bedecked in goose feathers. He must have been so lost to passion when I had put my mouth on him. His grip had torn away one of the pillow casings. 

"There are feathers in your hair, brother." 

"Cannot think of a better place for them," he said cheerfully, getting out of bed and dragging me with him. "I have one more gift for you."

"Your tendency to stir me away from postcoital lassitude is not charming, I shall have you know. This may reap consequences." 

"My future seems dire, then," he said in the sweetest of tones. 

He found blankets to wrap us in. Boldly, he opened the door that led to the courtyard outside. There were a few people canoodling in the alcoves, but most everyone had congregated in the fairgrounds leaving our wing quiet. My brother led me to the nearest torch and handed me a firecracker stick. 

I lit my stick at the torch and then held the spark to his, illumining his beloved face and form in my festival of light. Wrapped in a frayed blanket, with feathers in his hair, marked by my kisses, he had never looked more mine. 

_The last of my gifts to you shall be freedom_ , he had promised us in that feasting hall of Himring, as we celebrated our festival of lights one last time before the war that brought us unnumbered tears. Findekáno and I had stood beside him, keeping faith. We had then taken his promise to be about the war that we faced, about freedom from Melkor's threat. 

"Thank you for the gift," I said sincerely, turning to our sticks of fast-burning light. 

He waited until the firecrackers had died to a dull sparkle of ember, before carefully discarding them aside into one of the dousing buckets attendants had left beside the walls of the courtyard. Even in riches, even in crippling illness, he had not let another undertake the menial for him, unless I had been the one to offer aid. 

I had called him fated. It had taken me my years after him to realize that he had chosen me. It had not been no trick of fate that he had railed at. I had spent millennia lamenting darkly that fate had cursed me to love a brother. He had chosen me, time and time again, in memory and in oblivion. _I am here. Adsum_ , he had vowed, through our lives together, and it had been a choice he had made with a heart full of knowing. 

I had been a fool, thinking that he had wedded me at the end, before his death. He had made his vows to me many times over by then. _Adsum, Adsum, Adsum._

Winter had passed. The rains were over. There were flowers blooming on the trellises. Harvest drew near. The scent of woodsmoke and firecrackers hung in the air a cloying, sweet canopy. Above us, the fig trees bore green fruit. And my beloved came to me. 

Under starless skies, I caught his hands in mine, and chose him.

"I am here." 

His surprise was potent and it made me crave to paint him so. I could change nothing of what had been. I had fancied myself wise, after my trials and tribulations and millennia of solitude. I had not seen the obvious before me, in my desperation to seek out the secrets and the mysteries of him. I had failed to see the choice he had worn plainly. 

"I am here," I promised him again, and leaned in to wipe away his tears. 

When I opened my arms, he came to me with a sigh of relief, silent and trembling, overwhelmed, my pilgrim returned home. 

In music, the apotheoses was the last finale, exalting, ultimate, the culmination of every movement that had been woven before. 

"The first of my gifts to you shall be this," I vowed, wedding myself to him, choosing him as he had chosen me long ago.

I spoke the apotheoses of us with my next breath. 

"I am here." 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Sunset is maintained at a [Dreamwidth repository](https://the-song-of-sunset.dreamwidth.org). It is a set of stories that can be read as standalone or as a full alternate universe.


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